Hillary Clinton’s defeat crushes many women’s hopes

Share this:

Women of “Pantsuit Nation,” the pro-Hillary Clinton Facebook phenomenon, gather at the Walnut Creek BART station Monday night, on the eve of their candidate’s stunning loss to Donald Trump (Martha Ross)

At the Walnut Creek BART station Monday evening, the women of “Pantsuit Nation” were out in full force to show their support for Hillary Clinton

Dressed in various versions of the Democratic presidential nominees’s signature attire, the woman posed for photos with a cardboard Clinton and shared their excitement about the possibility that Clinton would be elected president Tuesday night and break the nation’s highest glass ceiling.

“I’m going to have to not cry because it means the world,” said Heidi Bailey, an attorney from Pleasant Hill who has a 13-year-old daughter. ”It means that everything is possible for everyone.”

Many women were crying Tuesday night, but not tears of joy.

Donald Trump won the presidency, ending the chance to break that glass ceiling by the only woman to ever get near it. They had felt her victory was necessary to let America know that its female population won’t tolerate a candidate who has made the most sexist, misogynistic comments of any nominee to run for president in recent memory.

All over Facebook and Twitter, women were voicing their disappointment, anger and more. That includes on the Facebook groups where Pantsuit Nation became a social media phenomenon over the past few months and gained more than 3 million followers.

“I’m in shock and panic this morning this morning,” wrote a woman in Shaumburg, Illinois.

“As a 14-year-old pro-choice, feminist, pro-BLM LGBTQ ally, and a female I am terrified. There are many days of anger, despair and horror ahead,” wrote a teenage girl.

In her concession speech Wednesday morning, Clinton said: “I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but someday, someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.”

Certainly among left-leaning women there was concern that Trump has the opportunity to reshape the Supreme Court in a way that might result in overturning abortion rights.

Many women also said they struggled with what to tell their young daughters on Wednesday morning. Amy Rosenberg, a 51-year-old communications consultant in Palo Alto, told the New York Times she tried to say something uplifting to comfort her 10-year-old daughter: “The good news is, you now have a chance to be the first woman president.”

But disappointment about Clinton’s loss wasn’t uniform across the gender.

“The world has witnessed a miracle,” Marie Hembree, a Contra Costa County-based writer and editor wrote on her Facebook page. She said “millions of deplorables” had boycotted Clinton endorsements from leftist publications and support from “one celebrity after another willing to sell their soul to be electing the first female president.”

The electorate was 52 percent female. While Clinton won the female vote 54 to 42 percent, Trump trounced her when it came to white, non-college educated women who gave the President-elect 62 percent of their vote to Clinton’s 23 percent, according to polls cited by CNN. Clinton fared better among white college-educated women, winning 51 to 45 percent, as well as non-white women.

One of the challenges of the Clinton campaign was that she was “an incredibly polarizing figure,” Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University told CNN. She also represented the establishment that Trump and his supporters vowed to pull down.

For these reasons, she couldn’t drum up the same kind of enthusiasm that a gifted orator like Barack Obama did in 2008, Lawless said. In 2012, Obama also managed to bring in more Latino, African-American and voters, ages 18 to 29.

But the women of Pantsuit Nation were plenty inspired.

“I think this is our time. I think we deserve it,” said Pat Toth-Smith of Benicia, who had come to the Walnut Creek BART photo event Monday night with her daughter Alia Toth-Smith, 14.

On Wednesday, Pantsuit Nation women across the country wrote of allowing themselves time to mourn, rest and then continue the fight for societal and political change.

“I believe the good that can morph out of our disappointment,” wrote a woman from Oakland. “Although our candidate did not win, our ability to rally together over the next four years and become agents of change is, with strong unified voices, just beginning.”

In a series of weekend tweets naming Mueller for the first time, Trump criticized the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and raised fresh concerns about the objectivity and political leanings of the members of Mueller's team.